Five disputations of church-government and worship

Sect. 11. Moreover 4. We shall be guilty of a fixed Schism among the Reformed Churches, and of making the healing of our breaches impossible, if by our compliance we own your dividing Principle, that [No other are true Ministers or Churches but such as have your Manner of Ordination] For by this Rule all the Ministers in these and other Protestant Nations must be degraded, or taken for no Ministers, and all the Churches for no true Churches (though perhaps they may be confessed Christian Communities,) Nor the Ordinances and administrations true. And do you think these are likely terms for Peace? Will they ever be yielded to by so many Churches? Or is it a desirable thing? Should Rome be so much gratified? And our Churches ruined? and the souls of millions cast away, and sacrificed to your opinions, or Peace? While your Prelacy pretended to no more, but to be the best sort of Government, and your Church to be the best of Churches, we could submit to you in all things that were not flatly sinful: But when you will be the only Churches, and unchurch all others, even the most flourishing Churches for knowledge and holiness, and when you must be the only Ministers, and others must be none, unless they will be Ordained by you; this is enough to put a sober man to a stand, whether he shall not be guilty of notorious schism, by complying with so schismatical a principle, if he subject himself voluntarily to a Prelacy that hath such principles and pretences, and to an Ordination that is administered on these grounds and terms. This was not the ground, nor these the principles of the former English Prelates: and therefore we were more capable of subjection to ⟨p. 194⟩them or Communion with them. We could have lived in their Communion and in the Communion of the rest of the Protestant Churches that have no Prelacy. But if by innovation, you have made such a change, as that we must separate from all the Reformed Churches and Ministers that have not your kind of Ordination, if we will be your subjects or be Ordained by you according to your grounds, its time for us to look about us, that we escape that separation and schism, that you would lead us into and engage us in by your way of Ordination.

Sect. 11. Moreover 4. We shall be guilty of a fixed Schism among the Refo••ed Church•s, and of making the healing of our breaches impossible, if by our compliance we own your dividing Principle, that [No other are true Ministers or Churches but such as have your Manner of Ordination] For by this Rule all the Ministers in these and other Protestant Nations must be degraded, or taken for no Ministers, and all the Churches for no true Churches (though perhaps they may be confessed Christian Communities,) Nor the Ordinances and administrations true. And do you think these are likely terms for Peace? Will they ever be yielded to by so many Churches? Or is it a desirable thing? Should Rome be so much gratified? And our Churches ruined? and the souls of millions cast away, and sacrificed to your opinions, or Peace? While your Prelacy pretended to no more, but to be the best sort of Government, and your Church to be the best of Churches, we could submit to you in all things that were not flatly sinful: But when you will be the only Churches, and unchurch all others, even the most flourishing Churches for knowledge and holiness, and when you must be the only Ministers, and others must be none, unless they will be Ordained by you; this is enough to put a sober man to a stand, whether he shall not be guilty of notorious schism, by complying with so schismatical a principle, if he subject himself voluntarily to a Prelacy that hath such principles and pretences, and to an Ordination that is administred on these grounds and terms. This was not the ground, nor these the principles of the former English Prelates: and therefore we were more capable of subjection to